Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

How to do it...

To print the text between line numbers or patterns, follow these steps:

1. Print the lines of a text in a range of line numbers, M to N:

        $ awk 'NR==M, NR==N' filename

 Awk can read from stdin:

        $ cat filename | awk 'NR==M, NR==N'

2. Replace M and N with numbers:

        $ seq 100 | awk 'NR==4,NR==6' 
        4 
        5 
        6

3. Print the lines of text between a start_pattern and end_pattern:

        $ awk '/start_pattern/, /end _pattern/' filename

 Consider this example:

        $ cat section.txt 
        line with pattern1 
        line with pattern2 
        line with pattern3 
        line end with pattern4 
        line with pattern5 

        $ awk '/pa.*3/, /end/' section.txt 
        line with pattern3 
        line end with pattern4

The patterns used in awk are regular expressions.